Scott writes about Internet competition and threats to tech capitalism (economic regulation, property infringement, and harmful industry behavior and misrepresentation.) Cleland is President of Precursor® LLC, a Fortune 500 research consultancy focused on the future of Internet competition, privacy, security, property rights, innovation and algorithmic markets. Scott Cleland is author of the book: “Search & Destroy: Why You Can't Trust Google Inc.” www.SearchAndDestroyBook.com. Cleland also authors the widely-read www.PrecursorBlog.com; publishes www.GoogleMonitor.com; and serves as Chairman of www.NetCompetition.org, a pro-competition e-forum supported by broadband interests. Eight Congressional subcommittees have sought Cleland’s expert testimony and Institutional Investor twice ranked him the #1 independent telecom analyst in the U.S. when he was working for institutional investors. See a full bio at www.ScottCleland.com.

SOPA Fixes Isolate Opponents, especially Google

The House Manager’s Amendment to the pending House Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) fixed the major legitimate problems with the original bill, effectively isolating the small but extremely vociferous minority of SOPA opponents who are either commercially or politically vested in sustaining a piracy-tolerant Internet model. Online ad-based models oppose piracy enforcement because piracy tolerance maximizes their audience and ad revenues and weakens their paid content competitors; while techtopians oppose it because they fantasize an Internet as naturally a property-less-place free from the rule of law or the sovereignty of the U.S. Government.

The formidable consensus behind this legislation was built brick by brick by doing it the right way: documenting and explaining a real national policy problem with real hard-to-ignore harms; comprehensively bringing together all the affected people, interests and industries; forging a bi-partisan, bicameral and Administration consensus-building process; painstakingly protecting freedom of speech and due process; and openly incorporating helpful technical fixes to address legitimate problems with the legislation as they arise.

To further increase consensus around the legislation, the House Manager’s Amendment addressed the concerns of unintended consequences by including blanket assurances that “the bill shall not be construed:” “as prior restraint on free speech or the press;” “no duty to monitor;” “no technology mandates;” and “no impact on the security or integrity of the domain name system.” To not endanger the Domain System, the bill does not dictate how a service provider is to technically prevent access to rogue sites, nor does it require modification “of its network, software, systems or facilities.” To avoid unintentionally capturing innocent U.S. sites, the general definitions clearly only apply to foreign sites; and the search engine definition only applies to the actual search engine, not any of the hundreds of thousands of sites that outsource their search service to a search engine provider. To dramatically narrow the applicability of the bill on financial institutions, the bill excludes banks and credit unions. And to avoid budget concerns, the bill requires the Departments of Commerce and State to absorb the costs in their existing budgets.

The Increasingly Isolated Opposition

The remaining major opponents of the legislation, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, eBay, Twitter, AOL, Linked in, and Wikipedia, who clearly oppose SOPA/PIPA despite the amelioration of many of their previous stated concerns, are becoming increasingly isolated politically. The four reasons why these opponents claim to oppose SOPA/PIPA in full page ads in major newspapers today ascribe preposterous ill-intent on proponents of rule of law and are patently untrue. First, they accuse proponents of seeking to monitor users when the Manager’s Amendment clearly states: there is “no duty to monitor… activity on the network or the service…” Second, they accuse the bipartisan majorities of the Senate and House Judiciary committees of seeking to deny due process of law when most of the bill’s framework is about requiring the traditional DOJ prosecutor approach of needing to seek a Federal Court injunction from a judge to expressly protect due process. Third, it accuses those same committees, whose oath is to protect the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the motive of encouraging the U.S. to “censor the web” like China and Iran do. Fourth, the opponents accuse proponents of seeking to “undermine security online by changing the basic structure of the Internet” when the Manager’s Amendment clearly states the bill has “no technology mandate,” and “no impact on security or integrity… of the domain name system…”

Opponents have seriously harmed their own credibility and isolated themselves by not offering one accurate or fair objection to SOPA/PIPA in its national media blitz to influence public opinion. Implicit in the opponents’ opposition approach is an elitist conceit that only their companies innovate in a way that matters or benefits users, not any other American inventors or creators throughout the economy hurt by piracy, and also that no one else but them, really cares about the Internet, innovation, freedom of speech, or due process.

The OPEN Act, (which would empower the International Trade Commission to adjudicate rogue website complaints), the Google-orchestrated legislative alternative to SOPA/PIPA is not a viable alternative because it is a transparent attempt to return a several year effort back to square one, while also entangling it with thorny and debilitating congressional jurisdictional turf battles and even thornier and glacial trade policy politics.

Simply, opponents’ position — to delay and deny a law enforcement solution to the real, dangerous and economically destructive problem of online piracy and counterfeiting on business, jobs, economic growth, and innovation – is politically untenable. At bottom, this is a political fight between the overwhelming majority of law-abiding Americans, companies and institutions hurt by rampant piracy versus a small minority of special interests who profit or benefit from the convenience of unfettered piracy, and a small minority of techtopians who politically oppose enforcement of property rights online as a threat to transparency, sharing, freedom of speech and democracy.

Google is the Opposition’s Achilles Heel

The opposition’s Achilles heel is Google’s leading the effort. Of all the entities opposing anti-piracy enforcement, no entity has less credibility on piracy than Google.

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This article made me angry. First of all, just because, “it’s not meant” to do something doesn’t mean people that want to make a profit won’t abuse this bill at a later date. It’s the internet, there’s always going to be a way to get around a bill like this. So when people do find a way, will the bill be updated? With what, more restrictions that “weren’t intended”?

I just don’t see this being a good start to anything. Time and time again, people with power and with a want for money have abused whatever resources they can to increase their revenue. Of course they would, it’s “smart”, but it doesn’t mean it is right.

I’m an independent artist and freelance web developer. If this bill passes and Google, Facebook, flickr, tumblr etc are forced to change their policies, I go out of business. But I guess it’s only the corporations you care about. My bad.

Unfortunately, this bill doesn’t just affect pirates. It would do things like take down all of tumblr for a single user posting copyrighted material, or more appropriately, take down many small individual sites for the actions of their users. It’s a bad bill.

Cutting to the chase, SOPA is NOT law-abiding Americans vs. those evil, nasty violators of copyright laws (no, they aren’t “pirates” — calling a copyright violator a “pirate” is like calling a jaywalker a “drunk driver”).

SOPA is about subverting our legal system and selling out our our basic freedoms to the media robber barons, and giving them yet more control over our shared cultural heritage.

SOPA is about catering to corporatist carpetbagers and allowing them to circumvent the rule of law.

SOPA is about oppressing law-abiding Americans, and that’s why we are opposing it.